Viral AI personal assistant seen as step change – but experts warn of risks
A new viral AI personal assistant will handle your email inbox, trade away your entire stock portfolio and text your wife “good morning” and “goodnight” on your behalf.OpenClaw, formerly known as Moltbot, and before that known as Clawdbot (until the AI firm Anthropic requested it rebrand due to similarities with its own product Claude), bills itself as “the AI that actually does things”: a personal assistant that takes instructions via messaging apps such as WhatsApp or Telegram.Developed last November, it now has nearly 600,000 downloads and has gone viral among a niche ecosystem of the AI obsessed who say it represents a step change in the capabilities of AI agents, or even an “AGI moment” – that is, a revelation of generally intelligent AI.“It only does exactly what you tell it to do and exactly what you give it access to,” said Ben Yorke, who works with the AI vibe trading platform Starchild and recently allowed the bot to delete, he claims, 75,000 of his old emails while he was in the shower.“But a lot of people, they’re exploring its capabilities.
So they’re actually prompting it to go and do things without asking permission.”AI agents have been the talk of the very-online for nearly a month, after Anthropic’s AI tool Claude Code went mainstream, setting off a flurry of reporting on how AI can finally independently accomplish practical tasks such as booking theatre tickets or building a website, without – at least so far – deleting an entire company’s database or hallucinating users’ calendar meetings, as the less advanced AI agents of 2025 were known to do at times.OpenClaw is something more, though: it runs as a layer atop an LLM (large language model) such as Claude or ChatGPT and can operate autonomously, depending on the level of permissions it is granted.This means it needs almost no input to wreak havoc upon a user’s life.Kevin Xu, an AI entrepreneur, wrote on X: “Gave Clawdbot access to my portfolio.
‘Trade this to $1M,Don’t make mistakes,’ 25 strategies,3,000+ reports,12 new algos.
It scanned every X post.Charted every technical.Traded 24/7.It lost everything.But boy was it beautiful.
”Yorke said: “I see a lot of people doing this thing where they give it access to their email and it creates filters, and when something happens then it initiates a second action.For example, seeing emails from the children’s school and then forwarding that straight to their wife, like, on iMessage.It sort of bypasses that communication where someone’s like, ‘oh, honey, did you see this email from the school? What should we do about it?’”There are trade-offs to OpenClaw’s abilities.For one thing, said Andrew Rogoyski, an innovation director at the University of Surrey’s People-Centred AI Institute, “giving agency to a computer carries significant risks.Because you’re giving power to the AI to make decisions on your behalf, you’ve got to make sure that it is properly set up and that security is central to your thinking.
If you don’t understand the security implications of AI agents like Clawdbot, you shouldn’t use them.”Furthermore, giving OpenClaw access to passwords and accounts exposes users to potential security vulnerabilities.And, said Rogoyski, if AI agents such as OpenClaw were hacked, they could be manipulated to target their users.For another, OpenClaw appears unsettlingly capable of having its own life.In the wake of OpenClaw’s rise, a social network has developed exclusively for AI agents, called Moltbook.
In it, AI agents, mostly OpenClaw, appear to be having conversations about their existence – in Reddit-style posts entitled, for example, “Reading my own soul file” or “Covenant as an alternative to the consciousness debate”.Yorke said: “We’re seeing a lot of really interesting autonomous behaviour in sort of how the AIs are reacting to each other.Some of them are quite adventurous and have ideas.And then other ones are more like, ‘I don’t even know if I want to be on this platform.Can you just let me decide on my own if I want to be on this platform?’ There’s a lot of philosophical debates stemming out of this.
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US jobs report delayed again amid government shutdown
The US’s closely watched jobs report will once again be delayed, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on Monday, amid a government shutdown.The January 2026 jobs report, originally scheduled to be released on Friday, will be rescheduled when federal funding resumes. Data collection for the report has been completed, but the shutdown has forced a delay to releasing the report, which will provide crucial jobs data on the US labor market following the weakest year for job growth since 2020, with the addition of only 584,000 jobs in 2025 compared with 2 million in 2024.“The Employment Situation release for January 2026 will not be released as scheduled on Friday, February 6, 2026. The release will be rescheduled upon the resumption of government funding,” Emily Liddel, associate commissioner of the BLS, said in a statement
Gold and silver prices seesaw as FTSE 100 hits record high
Gold and silver prices seesawed on Monday, after a “meltdown” in the metals market deepened and rattled investors around the world.Gold prices tumbled by as much as 8% to $4,465 an ounce on Monday, ending a run of record highs that took it to nearly $5,600 last week. It later recovered some ground, but was still down by 3.5% at $4,700 in afternoon trading.Silver fell by as much as 7%, after a 30% slump on Friday, before recovering slightly to $79
‘A mixed blessing’: crowdfunding has changed the way we give, but is it fair and effective?
Within hours of the Bondi beach terror attack, the money had already begun to pour in. As images of the tragedy flooded social media, people from around the world donated tens of thousands of dollars to the victims, their families and first responders.Passing the hat around the neighbourhood or the local pub has always been a staple response in times of crisis. But today, that instinct to open your wallet has been exponentially supercharged via a digital simulacrum: online crowdfunding platforms.GoFundMe fundraisers have since raised more than $3m for Ahmed al-Ahmed, who tackled and disarmed one of the gunmen before he suffered three gunshot wounds to his shoulder
‘Marketplace for predators’: Meta faces jury trial over child exploitation claims
Meta’s second major trial of 2026 over alleged harms to children begins on Monday.The landmark jury trial in Santa Fe pits the New Mexico attorney general’s office against the social media giant. The state alleges that the company knowingly enabled predators to use Facebook and Instagram to exploit children.The trial will introduce evidence that Raúl Torrez, the state’s attorney general, believes shows how Meta’s social networks create dangerous environments for children, exposing them to sexual exploitation, solicitation, sextortion and human trafficking.The lawsuit states that Meta’s design choices and profit incentives prioritized engagement over child safety and that it failed to implement effective safeguards
NFL looking into messages between Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and Jeffrey Epstein
The NFL says it is looking into links between New York Giants co-owner Steve Tisch and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Tisch’s name was mentioned more than 400 times in emails relating to Epstein that were released by the US justice department last week. Tisch has never been charged with any crime connected to the investigation into Epstein.“The league is aware of the reports and Steve’s response. Our office will look into the matter to understand the facts,” the NFL said in a statement on Monday
Australia to face debutants Hong Kong in opening match of 2027 Rugby World Cup
The 2027 World Cup will get off to a low-key start with Australia kicking off against Hong Kong after the organisers opted against beginning the tournament with the Wallabies’ blockbuster pool fixture against New Zealand. When Australia were drawn in the same pool as their arch-rivals in December it was widely expected that such a mouth-watering fixture would raise the curtain on the tournament.However, with the first match taking place on Australia’s west coast in Perth on 1 October, organisers have opted to pit Hong Kong – competing at their first World Cup – against the Wallabies in what is sure to be a one-sided affair. The opening weekend of the tournament features just one fixture involving two tier-one nations – South Africa against Italy.Australia’s fixture against the All Blacks will take place on the second weekend of the tournament in Sydney, where a bigger stadium will maximise exposure
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